A Mathematical Reflection of Little Significance before the Election

With less than two weeks before the election, I have been turning my thoughts more and more to other things. I’m just very tired of the way this one has spiraled downward.

I do know the mythology we are told as children. “Anyone can become president.” However, this “anyone can do it” ideology has worn thin. Anyone? I'm sure that a great majority in our county would counter with, Then why haven't we gotten better results this year? 

I’ve done some basic math, and I think I've figured something out that might help us. In every generation, there is room for about five people to become president—if two or more of them have two term presidencies. For my parents, members of the generation that lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, their generation saw the office held from Kennedy to the first George Bush. That’s Kennedy (Johnson was actually part of the previous generation), Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and the first Bush.

That's five people. Bill Clinton was our first boomer president. 

And this year's election might be the last election in which one of my generation provides a president—Trump or Clinton. Add him or her to Bill Clinton, the second Bush, Obama, and now, pick your poison.

Four people.

What this all means, of course, is that there aren’t that many openings for the job. We were told that any one of us could be president. Those were the words of my first grade teacher. However, there are only four or five openings, and there are millions of people in each generation (as I admitted, this is basic math—the same math I use when deciding not to buy a lottery ticket).

As I understand it, the presidency is a very specific job. I'm not sure that one can get there by starting as a short order cook. I mean, I suppose anything is possible. But we should be honest. The holders of the office of the presidency represent an elite group, more elite than poet laureates. Contrary to what I was taught, according to the math, almost no one can be president. 

But if one wants to be, it’s important to consider what it takes. It used to help to go to a law school. More recently, that requirement has been replaced by fame, as it has become obvious that it helps to have media attention, and wealth and celebrity will get one plenty of that, if you know how to say things that will keep getting you attention. And this year, it has become clear--to me, at least--that one of the candidates, outside of his celebrity and his wealth, has no business even running for the presidency. 

Yet there he is, poised to be one of the four or five my generation provides to the office. It makes me feel a bit shameful. This is my generation providing the fodder here. 

I’m not going to lose sleep over any of this. Things will be okay. I remember living through the Nixon resignation. 

That experience convinced me that I never wanted to be a president. It was never an ambition. But still, it does bother me to have more or less refuted a belief that I grew up with, one that has worked so well for elementary school teachers. But perhaps the reality is better that the lie we were told. What if you become wealthy and have appeared on a reality show? These things happen all the time. You can then make a serious bid for the white house, even with nothing else to recommend you.

Many are the contradictions, of course, on any given day, and always, anything is possible. And none of this may be possible.  

But play the cards you are dealt. You can never tell. 

That will be the take-away I choose to gain from this election. 

Mazel tov.